On 2 April I described how non-payments by states parties were defunding the implementation of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) and risking to shut down the 3-person Implementation Support Unit (ISU) and the convening of meetings. A couple of weeks earlier the Ambassadors of the three Depository States – the Russian Federation, United Kingdom and United States – had written an urgent letter to the BTWC States Parties to immediately comply with their financial obligations.

Since then, the situation has ameliorated somewhat. The contracts of the ISU staff have now been extended until the end of the year. But the crisis is far from over. When I wrote my blog posting, the deficit for the BTWC stood at US$ 379,557. According to the latest update on the financial situation (31 March) this figure has been reduced to US$ 188,631.

One county stands out in this dossier: Brazil. As reported in the earlier blog post, it owed the BTWC US$ 298,459 or 78.6% of the total deficit of the BTWC. With the exception of 2011 it has defaulted on its financial obligations or paid its dues only partially since 2001. That figure has not changed, which means that its debt now exceeds the current budgetary shortfall. It exceeds the combined outstanding debt of all other states parties.

The combined outstanding debt for four weapon control agreements administered by the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva – the BTWC, Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), and Anti Personnel Landmine Convention (OTW) – amounts to a staggering US$ 929,112. Brazil’s share is US$ 652,657 or 70%.

Civil society rears it head

Civil society is now taking up the issue. Mary Wareham, advocacy director of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch, has engaged Brazilian officials directly. In a Twitter exchange she elicited from Mr Benoni Belli, Policy Planner at Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, that ‘other payments will be made this year‘. Promising indeed, but promises unfortunately do not alleviate the financial problems.

The civil society platform Friends of the Biological Weapons Convention, coordinated by Kathryn Millett, has now also taken up the issue. Yesterday it posted an appeal to its Facebook page and announced the launch of an action campaign to prompt Brazil and other states to pay their assessed contributions:

On 31 March, the UN Financial Resources Management Service released a summary of the status of financial contributions to four disarmament conventions – the BWC, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons and the Mine Ban Treaty.

The summary (which updated an earlier summary dated 28 Feb) demonstrated that 3 of the 4 treaties were owed almost $1 million USD by states parties in unpaid assessed financial contributions. The BWC alone is owed almost $190K by its member states.

The significance of these debts cannot be overstated. New UN financial rules mean that meetings cannot take place nor can staff contracts be renewed unless the money is already in the bank. To that end, an extraordinary letter from the BWC co-depositories (Russian Fed, USA & UK) dated 21 March was sent to all states parties urging them to pay up or risk the possibility of a) not being able to renew ISU contracts past April 2017, and b) cancellation/curtailment of the 2017 Meeting of States Parties (MSP) scheduled for December.

While the BWC is hosted by the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, it is NOT an UN treaty and therefore cannot take advantage of central UN funds or reserves, nor is there a working capital fund like at the OPCW, which can be used to cover temporary financial shortcomings. In short, the BWC is fully dependent on states parties paying their dues in a timely fashion. If states do not, meetings will not happen and staff cannot work to administer the treaty.

That BWC ISU staff contracts have now been renewed until the end of the year is a very welcome development, but does not mean the BWC is out of the woods yet: the BWC does not have sufficient funds to cover the costs of the MSP in December.

Following the failure of the BWC Eighth Review Conference to achieve any meaningful progress in strengthening the convention, a successful MSP in December is more critical than ever to the continued health and relevancy of the treaty. This unsatisfactory situation is further compounded by the rise in use of non-conventional weapons by both states and non-state actors as evidenced by the situation in Syria. The norm of the Chemical Weapons Convention (the BWC’s sister convention) is under threat by the continued instances of the use of sarin and chlorine as weapons of war. The use of banned conventional weapons in warfare such as cluster munitions and landmines is also on the increase. Disarmament treaties are under threat and states parties must act to positively reinforce the norms against the use of banned weapons.

So – what can be done?

Civil society across disarmament domains will be writing letters to states that are the most significantly in arrears (such as Brazil). Please do consider signing these letters (we will post the letter here from the BWC community) and also check directly with your country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the status of their payments. If they haven’t paid their contributions, call/ email them demanding that they do so. Contact your country’s mission in Geneva and ask them what they are doing to remedy their debts. Make a noise on twitter.

If you would like more information on this situation as it progresses, please send a private message and we will get back to you. You can also read more on the issue here:

It was a remarkable act. On 21 March the Permanent Representatives to the UN Conference of Disarmament of the three co-depositories of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC)—the Russian…

the-trench.org

Time to act is now

Today, 22 April 2017, is the 102nd anniversary of the first modern chemical weapons attack. Chlorine is still a weapon of choice in the wars in Syria and Iraq. In both countries we have seen escalation to mustard and nerve agents. The Chemical Weapons Convention, which is as strong as a weapon control treaty gets today, is facing huge challenges to restore the basic principle of non-use under any and all circumstances. Not technical challenges, but as a consequence of the pursuit of geopolitical priorities by some key players…

While great civil society optimism is currently pushing many UN members to negotiating a ban on nuclear weapons, existing weapon control treaties are facing daily challenges. Some states are eroding value of these treaties as armed conflicts appear interminable; in other cases they simply fail to pay their dues, which undermines the tools to uphold the international norms embedded in those agreements. We simply cannot afford a breakdown in those regulatory regimes!

To this end, any stakeholder (professional or scientific association, academia), civil society organisation, or individual who wishes to preserve the four afore-mentiond international instruments to prevent of mitigate the consequences of armed conflict – the BTWC, CCM, CCW, and OTW – should contact Mary Wareham or Kathryn Millett to see how they can participate in letter campaigns or other initiatives under development.

This posting brings together the most important documents circulating at this stage.

First, the minutes with the statements by UN Security Council (UNSC) members and debate on 28 February, during which a resolution to sanction certain Syrian individuals deemed responsible for the earlier CW attacks was vetoed, can be downloaded here.

On 5 April, the UNSC held an emergency debate after the chemical weapon attack against Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib Province, Syria that killed scores of civilians – the death toll is now approaching 100 – and hundreds of other casualties.

In a statement also issued on 5 April, the WHO gave credence to the hypothesis that the agent or one of the agents used might have been sarin:

The likelihood of exposure to a chemical attack is amplified by an apparent lack of external injuries reported in cases showing a rapid onset of similar symptoms, including acute respiratory distress as the main cause of death. Some cases appear to show additional signs consistent with exposure to organophosphorus chemicals, a category of chemicals that includes nerve agents.

A debate and vote on these draft resolutions was expected in the evening of 6 April (EST), but has been cancelled.

Also on 6 April the European Union released a statement denouncing the chemical attack, but supporting ‘the efforts of the OPCW in Syria with regard to the investigation of the use of chemical weapons and [considering] that such efforts have to be continued in the future by the international community‘.

The UN Security Council is meeting on 7 April to discuss the US airstrike against Syria. A briefing ahead of the meeting updates the status of the negotiations on a resolution condemning Syria’s use of chemical weapons.

{Update} 11 April: Nabil Abi Saab has now posted the revised French, UK and US draft resolution on his blog.

It was a remarkable act. On 21 March the Permanent Representatives to the UN Conference of Disarmament of the three co-depositories of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC)—the Russian Federation, United Kingdom and United States—wrote to their colleagues in Geneva to address the question of ‘assessed financial contributions to the Convention’. The matter is extremely urgent:

We have been informed that the funding currently available will only allow the [Implementation Support Unit – ISU] staff to have their contracts extended until end of April 2017. We, therefore, urge all States Parties to the Convention to pay their assessed contributions as soon as possible and to settle their arrears without delay. Without the prompt resolution of this issue, the structures and decisions agreed upon just a few months ago at the Eighth Review Conference will be in serious jeopardy.

But the lack of funding could spell trouble for the BTWC process too:

With respect to the Meeting of States Parties scheduled for December 2017, States Parties are kindly reminded that sufficient funds must be received in advance in order for the meeting to be organized as scheduled. The financial situation will be monitored regularly and a decision will need to be made three months prior to the meeting as to whether or not it can be held as planned.

For those in Geneva closely monitoring the health of the BTWC, the issue of non-payments is not new, but acquired greater urgency throughout 2016 to the point that the 8th Review Conference last November discussed the matter several times during the three-week meeting. As stated in the final document (p. 22, §12):

The Conference notes that, under new UN financial procedures, funds must be available before meetings can be held. The Conference requests States Parties to proceed with the payment of their share of the estimated costs as soon as the assessment notices have been received from the United Nations to help ensure that the meetings can be held as scheduled.

Not just the BTWC

The issue is not unique to the BTWC. Merely a few weeks before the 5th Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (the so-called Inhumane Weapons Convention or CCW) was due to take place (12–16 December 2016) people were in despair whether it could be held at all. The CCW ISU even had to organise two informal briefings chaired by the President-designate on 8 and 14 November 2016 to discuss the financial challenges. As the CCW ISU wrote in its report covering the previous intersessional period:

An issue of significant importance in 2016 is the timely payment by States of their financial obligations under the framework Convention, Amended Protocol II and Protocol V to which they are High Contracting Parties, or meetings and conferences in which they participate as States not parties (observers). This has ended up being a major area of work for the ISU. The existing United Nations Financial Rules and Regulations have always required that funds are received in advance of incurring expenditures such as the organising of meetings and conferences under the CCW and the salary costs for the two ISU staff members. Recent financial accountability initiatives including the introduction of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) and the introduction of the new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, Umoja, are bringing greater transparency as well as stricter enforcement of these rules and regulations. These initiatives will no longer allow the Secretariat to convene a meeting or renew contracts of staff members, unless the necessary cash has been received in advance and previous arrears are paid in full.

This document also detailed the resource burden the arrears place on the small ISU (2 persons) and UN Office of Disarmament Affairs (UNODA):

UNODA, the Financial Resources Management Service (FRMS) of the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG) and the ISU are working together to address the current financial situation. Letters were dispatched to States reminding them of their outstanding dues, comprising their 2016 assessed contributions and past unpaid arrears. The ISU directly contacted States, updated the website on the status of contributions and facilitated the sending of messages on behalf of the President-designate on the financial crisis concerning the Review Conference. In addition, the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Mr. Kim Won-Soo, has brought this matter to the attention of the UN Member States in his statement at the UNGA’s First Committee and sent letters to all those States with outstanding dues.

Any outstanding arrears and the 2017 assessed contributions for the CCW must be received as soon as possible in order to ensure the continuity of the CCW Implementation Support Unit (ISU), particularly its staff members. Currently the funding available will only allow the ISU staff to have their contracts extended until the end of April 2017.

Blame it on Umoja …

The financial troubles affecting the implementation of multilateral disarmament and arms control treaties are not new. However, it is striking how last year they almost brought the work of agreements administered by the United Nations to a screeching halt. For treaties whose implementation is overseen by bodies outside the UN system, parties had to adopt specific measures to coax states into paying their arrears. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), having faced similar challenges for several years, has adopted multi-year payment plans. It can also coerce a recalcitrant member into paying by taking away its voting rights. Or by less formal measures … For instance, last year an ever louder suggestion circulated that the Technical Secretariat would no longer consider hiring Brazilian nationals until the country had fulfilled all its financial obligations. (On Brazil, more below.)

The United Nations adopted an organisation-wide resource planning system, which takes care of all staff and financial administration, including record-keeping, workflow and communications, as well as any activities undertaken by UN agencies. It controls the work of any UN operative even in the most far-flung places on this planet. Commonly known as Umoja—Swahili for ‘united’—it is former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s brainchild. It was rolled out in November 2015 but the inevitable growing pains became an immediate source of intense frustration among UN staff. As UN connoisseur Colum Lynch noted in Foreign Policy half a year later, the software required several years of development work at a cost of over $400 million. Still, he reported that because of the chaos it created people could go without pay for several months (a claim disputed by a UN spokesperson) and that the UN was struggling with outside contractors.

Umoja also places full administrative responsibility with the individual, irrespective of the person’s job description. There is little room for delegation or functional specialisation. Data input for the simplest of tasks, e.g. registering a travel mission, requires several pages of input. Organising a seminar halfway across the world against a tight deadline can be even more challenging, particularly if mandatory minimal bureaucratic timelines cannot be met. The slightest mistake blocks the whole process; a software glitch that fails, for example, to connect administration with finance to release the required funds can take many hours, if not days to locate people not just in the building where one works, but also at one’s destination. And when things seem to get arranged in Geneva, somebody in New York can still override the whole process, and without notification or explanation make different and unasked arrangements that suit nobody and end up costing a lot more. Of course, by the time such an intervention is nullified, original arrangements have been cancelled.

Umoja indeed concentrates a lot of bureaucratic power in New York, but has made administrative responsibility diffuse. Today people claim that Umoja works much more smoothly than in 2016. One may wonder whether this is the case, or whether UN staff is falling prey to some bureaucratic variant of the Stockholm syndrome.

But let us not digress too far. The core point concerning the rigidity imposed by Umoja is that even the smallest expense must have a specific budget line. Insufficient budgetary provision automatically entails that no money can be expended. Given the interconnectedness of all elements in Umoja’s process flow, the organisation of a meeting will therefore be automatically blocked.

… but it is really an individual responsibility of states parties

US$ 379,556.66. That is the deficit the BTWC was facing on 28 February. The budgeted expenditure for 2017 amounts to $1,109,500. Over one third of the money due has not yet been paid into the accounts. As the tables prepared by UNODA show, the nature of the deficit is even more hallucinating. Some arrears go as far back as 2001, year of the 5th Review Conference!

For the current year the deficit appears less dramatic at first sight: just under $27,000. In reality, however, the UN received only $759,796 in contributions. The remaining $322,767 comprises overpayments from states parties, money that in principle the UN ought to refund at the end of the year (i.e. 2016).

Thirteen out of 178 states parties owe UNODA money in excess of $10,000 (See Table 1). An additional 32 states are between 1,000 and $10,000 in arrears. The majority—107 states parties—have negative balances of less than $1000, of which 51 owe less than $100.

Twenty-six countries have paid a combined $322,767 in excess of what is due. In all but 8 cases the overpayment amounts to less than $1,000 and in many instances to less than $100. The overpayment by two countries stand out: the USA ($249,491 or 77.3%) and Saudi Arabia ($57,711 or 17.88%).

Table 2 shows that in seven cases the outstanding money is for 2017 only. A quick glance at the comprehensive table prepared by UNODA indicates this is also the case for many other countries.However, the responsibility of one country for the financial crisis is overwhelming: Brazil owns 78.6% of the total deficit of the BTWC. With the exception of 2011 it has defaulted on its financial obligations or paid its dues only partially since 2001. While it is true that 16 other states also owe UNODA money from before 2015, their combined outstanding balance amounts to $75,678. (As Table 2 demonstrates, three of those countries are also listed among the states parties owing more than $10,000 and are responsible for $57,472 of that debt).

Urgent response needed

While one can easily envisage Umoja provoking computer screens to fly across offices, it still remains the responsibility of individual states parties to meet their commitments under international treaties. In fact, it is because of Umoja that the scale of the disarmament deficit could be laid out in detail. And the management tool is discretely being deployed to diplomatically name and shame recalcitrant payers.

In October 2016, a mere two weeks before the start of the 8th Review Conference, the ISU prepared the first information document on the status of assessed contributions to the BTWC from 2001 up to 21 October 2016. The total outstanding balance was then $196,964. Comparison with the table issued in February shows that many states parties promptly responded, leading to a different pattern in overdue balances. The overall sum due increased by over $80,000, but as indicated earlier, many states still have to transfer their contribution for 2017.

At first sight, the situation may not appear as dramatic as suggested in the letter by the co-depositories. However, this is where Umoja raises its head again. Received funds have to be spread over different budget lines. Some of these budget lines will not be used until a specific event takes place (e.g., document printing or interpretation for a meeting); other ones cover regular expenditure (e.g., salaries). Umoja is all but inflexible about money transfers from one budget post to another (even temporarily). So, if the budget line for salaries is not replenished in time, then the ISU staff goes without remuneration, even if money were available for documents or interpretation to bridge a temporary gap. Alternatively, even with salary cost fully funded for some months, if insufficient money is available to organise an event, such as a meeting of states parties, then that event is in jeopardy. This explains the urgency in the call for contributions. The ISU cannot draw on a working capital fund like the OPCW, which it used to cover temporary financial shortcomings, or reserves. And while the ISU is placed under UNODA, it does not belong to the core UN units. As a consequence, it cannot draw on central UN reserves or spare resources in case of a temporary shortfall. (The same goes when an ISU staff member is on sick or maternity leave: because the absentee continues to receive remuneration, no other person can be hired on the same budget line and the ISU cannot draw on a central pool of UN staff resources.)

Looking at how the OPCW addresses unpaid dues by states parties, it is clear that Umoja imposes bureaucratic rigidity and limits human initiative. Yet, in all likelihood adaptation of the way in which the BTWC is administered will alleviate, if not resolve the current financial anxieties. Still, this does not absolve the responsibility of individual states parties to pay their dues in time.

Brazil bears an overwhelming responsibility for the current crisis: it owns more than three-quarters of the overall deficit of the BTWC. Its arrears go back a decade and a half. This is not the consequence of a single incident or forgetfulness. The period in question covers moments of more than average GDP growth as well as the recession of the past two years. The problem manifests itself is different disarmament and arms control forums, including the OPCW. Last summer Brazilian officials indicated publicly and privately that money was being made available to address this deficit of the BTWC. However, comparing the UNODA tables presented in October 2016 and February 2017 reveals no reduction in the outstanding balance. Quite on the contrary.

It will be up to the BTWC states parties and the highest political level in the United Nations to bear pressure on Brazil to resolve this matter urgently.